Time's Hourglass
by Lightninging
Summary: Rukia ponders her time, her life, and her friends during their final battle. Are her life and Ichigo's life as entwined as they think? IchiRuki angst goodness! T for character death ooohh! Birthday fic for PleepChan.Oneshot


A/N: BIRTHDAY FIC!!!! For PleepChan!!! Unfortunately, it's three months late... (Actually, one day less than that.) So sorry, Pleepers!!

Well, IchiRuki angst was requested by the birthday girl.

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_They were, each of them, in an hourglass._ Just as the sands of time would fall, so would they fall away. A balance- just like a shinigami's job in purest form. And if Rukia and the others just so happened to be buried and lost -_forevermore and nevermore_- beneath the glittering sand, so be it. Because eventually, once the hourglass was tipped the other way, they would be uncovered.

They could not be lost, not yet. First they had to tip over Aizen's hourglass- it had to be tipped over again, however early or late, before he was lost in the glittering swirls. The sheer _willpower_ it took. But... was he already lost? Was it their job to find him?

Did it make a difference?

Rukia did her best to help tip it. But even as she assissted the others, she had to build her own tower within her hourglass. Elsewise she would be buried within her own cascade of time. Before her job -to keep the balance- was over. Or was that 'before her job was _done'_?

But now her tower was crumbling, the sand of life (or was that death?) pouring ever harder on her head as she stared at his body lying in the sand. Poured, twirled around, broken and twisted. His hourglass had, for a moment, been lying on its side, up and down, life and death, both separated and -strangely- equal and nonexistent. He'd breached a gap with a moment of unseparated equality.  
For Ichigo Kurosaki's tower had been built well, and it had become a bridge. _But only for a moment, right before it crumbled... _

_ Ichigo's tower had been too high, too strong. As was the tower of Babel. He had built up, and up, and up- it had displaced the falling sand, risen above the glittering waves to erase the boundary of death and life. And as the tower of babel, it had fallen._

_ Fallen as his life had been toppled over, fallen as his time was swallowed by the chaos of the sands below, mixed in with the time of strangers- strangers that were him. Fallen as his blood had spattered on the sands of Hueco Mundo, wavering in a different whirpool of sand. Fallen as it had reached the heavens, piercing time. Fallen, crumbled into blood-spattered time._

_ Rukia could take no pleasure in the fact that Aizen had lost (or found?) even as Ichigo fell. Could not appreciate the thrill of victory that the tyrant's cycle was started again. Or was that ended again? (For, trapped as they were in whirls of time, how could they tell?)_

_ She understood that her tower had fallen as well. It had been built alongside Ichigo's after Kaien's had fallen. The invisible ties they had twined around each other's creations, supporting each other as they leaned on each other. Kaien's had collapsed... she had had to rebuild. Again? But she could tip her own hourglass... begin (or end?) anew. It was tempting._

_ Because seeing Ichigo, lying there, Rukia could not think the word 'love'. It hurt. It hurt! So many times she had cast ties to another's tower. It had all collapsed- again. again. again. again. The word was a damnation, forcing her. _

_ again..._

_ She could not rebuild. (re-again.) She couldn't build anymore- it had all fallen apart, the pieces buried beneath the shifting sands of an hourglass. She'd done it before, though- rebuilding. But this time..._

_"ICHIGO!!!!"_

_The word echoed on the wind the sands created, a whirlwind. Whirl-wind... Whirling wind, ripping another friend away from her._

_Orange hair and a cracked hollow's mask, black haori and red blood..._

_Red, red blood.._

AGAIN!

_Rukia could do naught but watch as her world was shaken and destroyed... without the hope of ever rebuilding again.  
Naught but listen as the glass walls of her rubble-filled world bounced back a fading echo of her cry..._

_"ICHIGO!!!!"  
"ICHIGO!!"  
"ICHIGO!"  
"Ichigo!"  
"ichigo..."_

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A/N: Well... Happy (Very belated) Birthday Pleepers!! Have fun in Thailand, and bring me back a souvenir!! (Just kidding... you have better things to spend your money on. Like some more of that Thai manga you told me about...  
*And learn how to spell 'Roy' and 'Hawkeye' in Thai too, because that's a much better use of your time that learning how to spell 'Edward Elric'. ;)*

Please review, everyone! Personally, I think the Bleach category needs more reviewers...

**PLEASE REA****D:In your review, would you ki****ndly suggest a prompt word for my new Bleach couples drabble series? If you do, and I use it, I'll dedicate that chapter to you.**

Thankies all for reading!! ~Rina


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